Apple’s iPod prospers as piracy flourishes

20 years ago

“When Apple Computer began selling a new iPod that plays video last month, the mainstream content available from Apple was pretty thin. The company hawked a collection of music videos, some short films from Pixar and episodes of five Disney-owned TV shows, all available through iTunes Music Store,” Nick Wingfield writes for The Wall Street Journal. “It didn’t take long after Apple introduced its new product for crafty Netizens to start sharing movies and TV shows formatted for the device (do a Google search with the words ‘torrent,’ ‘video’ and ‘iPod,’ if you don’t believe me, or visit Podtropolis.com). The Internet teems with pirated TV shows and movies downloaded through file-sharing technologies like BitTorrent over broadband connections. And users have access to any number of programs that crack the copy protection on DVDs meant to deter duping movies onto computers.”

Wingfield writes, “The iPod, of course, has licit and illicit uses, just as other technologies. It’s hard to say how much consumers pack their devices with pirated copies of ‘The Chappelle Show’ or ‘CSI,’ but there are some clues. Apple says it has sold more than 600 million songs over the Internet, from zero just two-and-a-half years ago when the iTunes Music Store opened for business. But week-over-week growth of online song sales this year, including from the iTunes Music Store, has significantly slowed as iPod sales soared. In a research report last month, Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Fulcrum Global Partners, estimated the average annual song purchases per iPod online fell to 15 songs per iPod in the third quarter from 25 in the same quarter last year.”

“Tensions with the recording industry, however, don’t seem to have hurt Apple’s talks with Hollywood. NBC Universal has said it’s close to making its own deal with Apple for TV shows, just as Disney did. And TiVo recently said it will let its users transfer recorded shows to iPods. Still, it isn’t clear whether Apple can duplicate its position in the digital-music market in the online-video world, with competition there getting more serious,” Wingfield writes. “For any TV producer tempted not to return phone calls from Steve Jobs, they have to ponder: Help Apple help consumers buy content, or have the consumers help themselves to freebies.”

Full article here.

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